The curves of the new
Liege-Guillemins station, designed by Santiago Calatrava have graced the city since it's opening in 2009. The major city in Wallonia is situated on the river Meuse, near Belgium's eastern borders with Germany (Aachen) and The Netherlands (Maastricht).
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| Views from the Namur to Liege train |
Liege-Guillemins is normally served by two trains an hour from Namur taking 45-50 minutes for the journey that follows the north bank of the river Meuse. We arrived in Liege by train on the morning of Friday 31 January 2025. Passengers aged 65+ can make a return journey between any two Belgian cities for €8.50 with a
Senior Ticket. Tram tracks now lie in front of the station but the start of the
Liege tram service has been delayed until April 2025.
L'Aigle d'Or
Taverne
L'Aigle d'Or is one of the few Wallonie bar cafes mentioned in
Belgian Cafe Culture by Regula Ysewijn. Most of the iconic cafes in this handsome book are in Flanders.
Arriving here just before noon, we were able to find a table before customers began arriving at lunchtime. Blackboards list the lunchtime menu, large arches break the space into distinct areas, several tall fridges are stocked with a variety of beers, a partition separates the bar from the dining area with tables.
A bound menu includes details of 9 permanent draught beers and bottled beers. A further 11 variable draught beers are served.
Permanent draught beers include L'Aiglon, a 5.4% ABV Blonde brewed for the bar by
Brasserie Minne. This was highly rated by Frank, a homebrewer from Aachen (
humble_beer on Untappd).
Impressively, the menu page for Trappist beers includes 3 Westvleteren beers and Tynt Meadow. Music playing included Steppenwolf - Born to be Wild.
Museum La Bovarie + Madame Bovarie
After coffee at Aigle d'Or, we headed to Museum
La Boverie (art gallery), crossing to the island part of Liege using the
La Belle Liegeios footbridge which opened in 2016.
Artworks in the permanent collection include The Turnip Washer by Evariste Carpentier.
The fridge at the
Madame Bovarie 'sandwich shop' inside the museum building with views towards the river Meuse was well stocked.
For our first beers of the day we enjoyed locally brewed beers here. Blanche de Liege is a wheat beer brewed by
Brasserie de l'Abbaye du Val-Dieu, 20 km north-east of Liege. Smash is a pale ale brewed with Mosaic hops by
Brasserie (C) in Liege. A complimentary bowl of savoury snack biscuits was placed on our tray when we reached the payment point.
It was nice to see
Le Plongeur et son arc in the distance, a 2000 replica of a 1939 artwork by Idel Ianchelevici featuring a diver on his hands on the tip of a white arc of a diving board on the opposite bank, as we walked northwards from La Boverie.
After crossing the Pont Albert 1 back to the west side of the river, we walked past the yacht harbour and then inland to Place Saint-Paul by the cathedral before continuing past the historic
Taverne Saint-Paul to reach Le Pot au Lait.
Le Pot au Lait
A lengthy passage leads to
Le Pot au Lait and there are exotic and colourful 3D murals to admire on the way.
The entrance to the bar is also elaborately and colourfully decorated.
Inside the lighting is dim and a variety of spooky and weird images and objects are displayed. There are plenty of different areas for seating and it was quite busy for an afternoon. Heavy metal music was playing.
The beer menu offers good variety and value. Beers are ordered and paid for at the bar, which has a surface decorated with a colourful mosaic design..
Beers may be served in a standard stemmed glass as in the case of the
Goliath Triple brewed by
Brasserie des Legendes.
L'Annexe
To reach our final bar in Liege, L'Annexe, involved passing
Au Delft by the university and recrossing the river Meuse on a footbridge -
Passarelle Saucy.
is accessed from a narrow passageway (Rue Roture) that leads off a one way street (Rue Puits-en-Sock) and is situated across from Cafe Le Petit Bougnat. It's only open from 4pm on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
Blackboards against an internal brick wall by the bar list bottled / canned beers, cocktails (not shown above) and draught beers. The bar was very quiet so there was an opportunity to chat with Kenny the barman, from Mauritius. He went to the cellar to look for a beer from Misery Beer Co (as featured in Breandan Kearney's book
Hidden Beers of Belgium).
He returned with his last can of English Porter (€7) but sadly there was no Harzington 'inspired by the brewers of Vermont'.
Instead Hazy Pale brewed by
Norm Brewing, less than 2km away proved an excellent alternative. Kenny also gave us a complimentary dish of crisps. Music playing was laid back in style e.g. Ross David - Fire Burnin.
The bar was still quiet when we left and in a heartwarming moment, Kenny handed me the can of Misery Beer Co English Porter as a gift, refusing to accept any payment for it. Cheers!
From here we caught a bus that took us over the Pont des Arches and dropped us near the imposing
Palais Provincial. A short uphill walk leads to Liege-Saint-Lambert station which was undergoing building work and had no functioning platform indicators. Happily the train we boarded was bound for Brussels via Namur and we would arrive back in Namur in darkness.
Obviously, half a day is inadequate to explore Liege fully and it is a city destined for a future visit!
A separate blog post
Namur 2025 features bars visited in Namur on this trip.
